hypocrisy

The Chool Bus (ch38)

CHAPTER 38: Thanksgiving dinner with Jack’s family in Savannah, Georgia.

The house was pregnant with autumn olfactory assaults, sage, pumpkin spice, and simmering family traditions: food, spirits, and the “Scarlet P.” At one side of the long table sat Chloe, immaculate in a tailored cream turtleneck, radiating the polished, certain energy of a libertarian pundit who just signed a three-year own the libs book advance. Directly across, her favorite fightin’ cousin Jack, leaning forward in his trademark Thanksgiving navy-blue overalls, tapping his index finger trying, like always, to apply selective hearing as Chloe, grown less and less willing to leave the Scarlet P off the Thanksgiving table, droned on about unelected meddling federal bureaucrats.

Between them sat the traditional battleground: a glistening, perfectly basted twenty-pound turkey, wine, stuffing, cranberry sauce, aunts, uncles, cousins, and the Forks secretly looking forward to this legendary battle of matched wits.

The spark caught when Buck politely declined the candied yams.

“Good idea,” Jack announced, he and Buck agreed about Americans’ obsession with sugar. “No offense to Aunt Jean’s dish, but it’s always been a bit too sweet for my taste. Besides, it’s time to break the system promoting food and beverages loaded with sugar and high-fructose corn syrup to marginalized communities. Old habits die hard ya know.” Jack was waxing eloquent. “For a gustatory shock, give Japanese hard candy a try one of these days. My first exposure had me wondering… ‘where’s the sugar?’ It’s a totally different system there.”

Chloe dabbed her mouth with a cloth napkin, letting a patronizing, camera-ready smile bloom across her face. “Jack, daaarling. The only thing systemic at this table is your inability to eat a carbohydrate without turning it into a class-struggle talking-point. Are you going to debate the yams, or are you going to pass them to someone who actually believes in personal joy?”

Uncle Fred let out a low whistle from the corner. “Round one…ding, ding, ding.”

Jack didn’t miss a beat. He leaned in, his retort spinning at three hundred words per minute. “I believe in joy, Chloe. I just prefer my joy aligned with verifiable facts, preferably from recognized communities of experts, peer-reviewed, and buttressed by double-blind tests for iron-clad veracity. Speaking of credible sources, i noticed your peanut-butter pie has a store-bought crust. Don’t you usually do that from scratch? Is this your way of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps? You know that’s physically impossible, right? Try levitating the cranberry sauce over here.”

A ripple of laughter echoed down the table. Cousin Sam slapped the mahogany. “It’s true! I tried that. I put on my boots, grabbed the straps, and tried to pull myself up. Levitate…? Ha! That’s one of my favorite Dr Hook songs.”

“Sure, you got me, the crust was pre-made in a grocery store,” said Chloe. “Most likely mass produced, even. But i brought something better than homemade pie crust,” Chloe adjusted her cuffs. “I brought cash to pay for groceries. Because unlike some, whose entire ideology is dedicated to complaining about capitalism from their iPhones paid for through their parents’ family wireless plans, i actually understand market logic. Every day, i expose the hypocrisy of keyboard warriors planning revolution from their climate-controlled Brooklyn lofts.”

“Are you sure those lofts aren’t shared with three roommates because they can’t afford private housing due to venture capitalists turning the market into a casino?” Jack shot back, his hands gesturing in rapid, geometric chops. “But that’s fine. I know it’s hard for you to grasp structural inequity when your entire aesthetic is ‘I read Thomas Sowell once and made it my entire personality.’ You don’t have political philosophy, Chloe, you have a Pinterest board of 1950s tax codes.”

Aunt Jean nearly choked on her sweet tea. “Bless her heart, not the Pinterest board!”

Chloe’s eyes gleamed. She was in her element. “And your entire aesthetic is ‘I have a fancy high-tech degree and now i yell at people faster than they can blink.’ You don’t have conversations, Jack. You just have verbal seizures. If you spoke at a normal human cadence, your students would realize you’re just an over-educated shithead with a Bernie Sanders crush.”

“A fast repartee is only a seizure to someone who processes data at dial-up speeds,” Jack retorted, zeroing in. “It’s okay, take your time. I know you’re used to the teleprompter feeding you rebuttals on behalf of the billionaire class. But tell me, Chloe, when Elon finally colonizes Mars, do you think he’s gonna let you ride on the bridge, or are you gonna have to podcast from the cargo bay with the gear?”

The table erupted. Uncle Reggie had to put his fork down, laughing so hard he wheezed. “Cargo bay! He put you in the trunk, Chloe!”

Chloe broke character for a fraction of a second, a genuine smirk slipping through her practiced composure. She reached out and smoothly handed Jack the bowl of macaroni and cheese.

“Eat your dairy, Jack,” Chloe purred, her voice dripping with absolute mock-sweetness. “Your brain needs the glucose to figure out why socialism fails every single time it’s tried. Maybe you can run a quick regression analysis on the cheddar to Velveeta ratio.”

Jack accepted the bowl, scooping a generous portion onto his plate. He looked up, matching her smirk perfectly. “Thank you, Chloe. And make sure you get some of them collard greens. It’s the closest you’ll get to acknowledging your roots all year.”

The table descended into absolute pandemonium. Jimmie fell entirely out of his chair. Aunt Jean was waving a napkin in the air like a surrender flag, tears streaming down her face, while Uncle Ronnie just kept shouting, “Stop the fight! Stop the fight!”

Chloe threw her head back and let out an unpolished laugh, breaking the tension completely. She raised her crystal glass of Moscato in the direction of the turkey. Jack grinned, tapping his water glass against his fork in a mock salute. The scarlet P was put on pause, the audience was thoroughly entertained, and the gravy was finally passed.

And this scene almost didn’t happen. The Chool Bus almost didn’t make it to Georgia as circumstances began pulling on Professor T like a magnet. He needed to get back home in time to work through the sexual harassment case brought by Abigail Weiser’s corrupt attorneys. Professor T was certain all was not as it seemed, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it with what legal assistance he could afford on a mid-level academic’s salary. But Jack assured Mork the delay would be worth it as his extended family was exceedingly entertaining, especially at the annual Thanksgiving Feast.

Jack was right, and after the food and spirited debates were spent, the Forks made their way to the Bus and began the three-day journey back to home base for the holidays. Professor T was confident he would prevail in his campaign to establish innocence. If he and Abigail weren’t able to reconcile afterwards, that would be on her, he thought.

NEXT WEEK:
The Forks return home for the holidays and Professor T copes with a disappointing verdict in the troubles with Abigail Weiser.

GO BACK => Preface and Chapter Links

This Land: Rhode Island

On a heat-dome addled Monday in Tewksbury, MA, Ronnie and Rocinante slid into a local convenance store for fuel and to replenish the ice chest. As Ronnie was interacting with the generously inked and dreadlocked counter attendant, his manager, clearly the owner of this mom & pop operation, looked Ronnie in the eye and said, “Do you have an accent?” Now, Ronnie had just returned from another provisions outlet where he overheard a conversation between associates.

“I think this point of sale terminal is malfunctioning in ‘cash mode.'” she said, “I’m gonna set it for cad-only.'” Now, is that a typo on our part? NO! She said “cad,” but what she meant was “card.” So, Ronnie remains a bit perplexed as to whom exactly has the accent.

Ronnie, responding to the convenience store owner said, “It seems nobody has an accent till they get around people with a different one.”

Truer words.

Anyway, we’re in Rhode Island for this post, and for some reason, Ronnie had experienced some sleep irregularities. Not the norm mind you, but it happens and when it does some wild dreams get remembered (example?). Case in point, Day #2 in Coventry, another invasion of Ronnie’s peaceful sleep cycles… a sort of blathering screed about that mostly coastal postage stamp of a state. And who’s the narrator? That cartoon fat man, a walking testament to the American diet and the utter collapse of television censorship, Peter Griffin. Jesus Christ, is this what we’ve come to? There must have been something weird about that clam chowder Ronnie got from the local grocery? The horror, the horror…

Peter, in a fit of fiery indignation, started in on one of the state’s founders, “This Roger Williams character. A refugee, they say. Fled persecution. Bullshit! He was probably just too goddamn weird even for the Massachusetts Puritans, and that’s saying something. He bought some land, probably with a handful of cheap beads and a bottle of rotgut whiskey, and declared it ‘Providence.’ A sanctuary! For who? For the ‘weirdos and misfits,’ the ‘guys who do a little this and a little that.’ Sounds like a goddamn convention of the criminally insane, doesn’t it? ‘Rogue’s Island,’ they called it. More like Rage Island, or Rancid Island, a Petri dish for every festering perversion known to man…” Suddenly, a voice from the men’s restroom, “Giggity!” Then silence.

He continued, “And the Constitution! Oh, the glorious, blood-soaked parchment of American liberty! While the rest of the nascent republic was trying to cobble together some semblance of order, Rhode Island was apparently sittin’ on the couch like, ‘Nah, I’m good. I’m readin’ the Farmer’s Almanac.’ Good Christ!” Peter was on a roll. “The sheer, unadulterated laziness of it! Not principled dissent, mind you, but pure, unadulterated apathy, only stirred into action by the threat of losing their ‘beer money.’ This wasn’t a fight for freedom; it was a shakedown, a desperate scramble to avoid the inevitable taxation that always follows the grand pronouncements of liberty.”

Peter signaled the bartender for another round and pressed on. “‘Ocean State,’ they crow. Four hundred miles of coastline! Fourteen percent water! As if this is some grand revelation. It’s a goddamn island, you morons! What did you expect, a desert? It’s like boasting your bathtub is full of water. It’s a transparent attempt to distract from the real stench, the profound, unsettling truth about this place.”

In the hazy mist of the dream, Ronnie wasn’t a hundred percent sure to whom Peter was directing his rant, but the outlines of his Afro-Cuban neighbor, Cleveland, began to materialize, a half-empty beer in front of him. Peter, looking skyward in righteous reverie continued, “And the slavery, oh, the slavery! ‘First to abolish,’ then ‘Just kidding!’ A legislative sleight of hand, a cynical wink and a nod to the rum distilleries and the triangular trade. Six point three percent of the population enslaved in 1774, almost double the New England average. Don’t tell me about ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ when the very foundation of your prosperity was built on the backs of stolen lives. It’s the same old hustle, isn’t it? Preach the gospel of freedom while your pockets are stuffed with ill-gotten gains. The hypocrisy, man, it’s enough to make you chew your cartoon arm off.”

“I like rum,” Cleveland said, his deadpan delivery barely audible in the wake of Peter’s fog-horn tirade.

“Rogue Island,” Peter lampooned, “first to tell England to buzz off, last to join the Union. A pattern emerges, doesn’t it? A chronic inability to commit, a perpetual state of adolescent rebellion, always wanting to be the special snowflake, until the big boys threaten to cut off their allowance. It’s not courage; it’s just plain pig-headedness.”

“And the voting! Jesus… the goddamn voting! You needed $134 in property, for Christ’s sake! By 1840, only 40% of white men could vote. It’s a system rigged from the start, designed to keep the unwashed masses in their place, to ensure that the propertied few could continue their grotesque charade of democracy. And this ‘Dorr Rebellion‘… a pathetic, localized spasm of outrage, quickly squashed, leaving the fundamental rot untouched. The Supreme Court, naturally, ‘wouldn’t touch that.’ Why would they? It’s all part of the grand, unspoken agreement to keep the boot on the neck of the regular folks here at the Drunken Clam.”

The rest of Peter’s drinking buddies began to materialize. Peter soldiered on, “then the vampires! Good Christ, the vampires! Tuberculosis, they say, but the rubes, the goddamn rubes, they saw bloodsuckers. Digging up bodies, burning hearts. It’s not just a historical footnote; it’s a profound metaphor for the state of the superstitious soul. When faced with the inexplicable, we resort to primitive rituals, to burning and fear, rather than confronting the cold, hard facts. And a ‘vampire heart’ for a couple of beers? That’s the kind of logic that gets you locked up in a padded room with a straightjacket.”

“The Civil War, the Gilded Age, the KKK burning a school for black children… a relentless parade of entitled ugliness. Industrial might built on exploitation, wealth amassed by robber barons, and the persistent, festering cancer of racial hatred. And the Catholics! The most Catholics! Just another demographic shift, another wave of huddled masses yearning to breathe free, only to find themselves crammed into textile mills and subjected to the same old Capitalist grind.”

Peter was beginning to sound like a Billy Joel song, “Bike paths, clam chowder, johnnycakes… meaningless diversions, crumbs thrown to the masses to keep them from noticing the true horror. And the mob! The Patriarca family, running New England from Providence for forty years. Now that’s the real power, isn’t it? Not the politicians, not the courts, but the silent, brutal efficiency of organized crime. It’s the only thing that makes sense in this goddamn asylum.”

“And the ultimate indignity?” Peter was starting to sound magnanimous, humble, even. “The state’s defining cultural artifact is a cartoon, a crude, blustering, ironically lovable cartoon with absolutely no redeeming qualities.”

Peter Griffin, working at the Pawtucket brewery, lampooning the very place he inhabits. It’s the final, damning indictment. Rhode Island, a place so steeped in its own absurd contradictions, that its best legacy is a perpetual punchline delivered by a cartoon with a metric ton of ironic jokes, none of which are too good to be driven into the ground or, “the bottom of Greenwich Bay you landlubbers.” Say what you will about Rogue Island, it can’t get weird enough for Ronnie & Rocinante… they love it here.

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie

When the Puritans…
Come off too venomous…
You’ve Rhode Island…
For your providence…
Four hundred miles of…
Shore line restlessness…
Meet me and Griffin…
At the Drunken Clam.

Irony is Dead (v42a)

Ah, the irony, it burns like a habanero dipped in turpentine! These self-styled patriots, these bastions of bootstrapped prosperity, these impotent congress-critters, now want to pull the ladder up behind them, leaving the rest of us to drown in the fetid swamp of their hypocrisy.

For decades, they’ve feasted on the fruits of immigrant toil, their pockets lined by the sweat and tears of folks who crossed deserts and oceans for a shot at the American Bait-and-Switch. They’ve built their empires on backs bent under the sun, minds dulled by the drudgery of minimum-wage purgatory. All the while, they (the ruling elites) sang hymns to liberty and opportunity, their forked tongues dripping with a molasses-thick patriotism that choked on the merest whiff of diversity.

But now, the winds are shifting. The browning of America, once a distant tremor, is an earthquake at their door. The faces they once exploited, the hands that picked their crops and cleaned their toilets, are no longer content with crumbs from the master’s table. They dare to aspire, to dream of a slice of the pie they helped bake. And that, my friends, is the real culture war.

Suddenly, the land of the free morphs into Fort Knox, the Statue of Liberty replaced by a gargoyle with a padlock for a mouth. Walls rise like monuments to their own fear, moats filled with the crocodile tears of those who once swore by the great American melting pot. They rail against “invasion,” these architects of exploitation, while forgetting the original sin – the forcible dispossession, the bloody conquest that birthed their precious nation.

The irony is enough to make a jackass weep! These masters of the oligarchy, these captains of energy-independence, these dismantlers of democracy, now reduced to trembling toddlers clutching their sandcastles against the tide. Their gilded cages, built on the backs of the forgotten, suddenly seem awfully fragile. And as the waves of change lap at the ramparts, they scream for walls, for moats, for anything to keep the ghosts of their own greed at bay.

But let them not fool you, these wall-whiners, these moat-mongers. Their fear is not of immigrants, but of justice. Their gated communities are not sanctuaries, but confessionals, where they whisper the sins of a nation built on stolen land and desperate workers. So let the walls rise, let the moats fester, for in their fetid depths lies the true face of American hypocrisy, a monument not to liberty, but to the fear of its own shadow.

Loopcircus